Features

On the tranquil lakefront of Stillwater, Minnesota, is a Mid-Century Modern home physically built stone-by-stone by Don and Virginia Lovness in about 1957. Renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright originally designed the project, made up of a custom home and guesthouse cottage.

When Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VBCPS) decided to replace one of its oldest schools — Floyd E. Kellam High School — not only did the project team seek to develop an eco-friendly campus, it also planned to support and facilitate a curriculum focused on engaging students in their own learning.

Engineers and architects choose to specify concrete masonry units (or more commonly called, CMU’s) for their variety of beneficial material properties. According to ASTM International, this low-maintenance material is ensured to meet all minimum design expectations.

Some people got it and some people don’t. Some people are naturals and others struggle. Some people have to draw it out and some go by the seat of their pants. “What is it?” It’s the ability to visualize, to see the end result of an outdoor design, to know what is going to work and more importantly to know what is not going to work.

Increases in population, urbanization, and changes in climate have placed increasing numbers of the US population into areas that are subjected to higher and more damaging winds. This increase in risk has prompted a response by the building codes. In fact, the 2015 edition of the International Building Code (IBC) [1]now requires that most schools and emergency facilities located in a significant portion of the Central US contain tornado shelters.

Master builder John Weaver and a handful of farmers built Rohrbach’s Bridge over Antietam Creek in 1836. They built the creamy white stone bridge with three magnificent barrel arches and elegant proportions: 14 ft. 9 in wide and 125 ft. long. They made wood-capped parapets atop the structure of limestone sourced locally from there around Sharpsburg, Maryland.